


Snowflake dreams and happy endings

by Stonehill



Category: RWBY
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Friendship, Implied Romance, Late Night Conversations, RoseGarden, Slice of Life, Subtle Romance, bonding bookworms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-07
Updated: 2018-12-07
Packaged: 2019-09-13 19:49:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16898835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stonehill/pseuds/Stonehill
Summary: “What do you miss the most?” She asks gently, quietly. It’s a gamble; Oscar doesn’t talk about home, holds it close and private as if doing so will protect it from vanishing entirely from his grasp.But he doesn’t hesitate.





	Snowflake dreams and happy endings

**Author's Note:**

> So this came about after V6C6, because it feels so tragic that Ruby is so good at holding her fears and bad memories at bay that we only see them when they overwhelm her in sleep and she wakes up in a coldsweat. And because I'm a sucker for ships where one of the characters suffers from nightmares, but finds solace just by napping beside the other.
> 
> So! Without further ado! I hope you enjoy, and I'll see you at the end!

A dark cloud crawls across the night sky, casting shadows on a frozen landscape. The valley they’d climbed out of that morning is an otherwise unmarked Christmas card of icy crystals on trees and blue mountains, cast in all whites under the bright light of a shattered moon.

They’d been a week under way already, the apathy of burnt down farms left behind for the solitude of crystalline wastelands.

And yet the serene beauty of the landscape does nothing to help Ruby sleep, and so she merely turns off the second alarm on her scroll and re-activates her aura against the cool.

The others need their rest, anyway.

“I knew you wouldn’t wake me,” Weiss murmurs, tapping Ruby’s shoulder with her knee, and breaking her from her reverie.

She stands, a ghost of white in her native terrain, the temple ruins behind her creating an eerie world of forgotten gods and goddesses. But the blanket over her arm and the steaming mug in her hand breaks the illusion, bringing warmth and softness back into the image, a triangle that shouldn’t fit into a square but does because it’s Weiss.

“You need your sleep, Ruby,” she adds when her companion says nothing.

Ruby crawls from her seat at the edge of the world, the gift of the gods dangling at her hip, and sighs. “Fine, I’ll try.”

“Before you do,” Weiss adds, placing the mug firmly into Ruby’s hand.

Hot chocolate swirls in its depths. “Thank yo—“

“Not for you,” Weiss cuts her off, and glances back at their camp, at a solitary figure huddled by a fallen pillar, muscles clearly tensed even from a distance. “He’s still having trouble keeping his aura engaged in his sleep.”

Ruby mouths a tiny ‘oh’ and forgets she was going to find an excuse to not go back to sleep. “Thank you.”

Weiss’ smile is mellow and kind. “If you’re going to keep awake for longer than necessary you might as well ensure our little leader doesn’t freeze to death.”

Ruby jostles her friend with her elbow at the ironic title, before leaving her to sit guard. She runs her fingers along the freezing surface of the pillar, tiny ice crystals painting old carvings of a forgotten pantheon in whites and blues. She only drops it to her side when she reaches a break in the pillar, murals vanishing for thin air, before taking up their storytelling task again, undisturbed and ignorant of their split.

Ruby’s heart stills in her chest when she sees how pale Oscar has become, freckles indistinguishable and lips nearly blue.

The moon vanishes behind another cloud, and casts his face in shadow, darkness descending on him like a death sentence.

Ruby brushes her fingers against his temple, wisps of hair caressing the back of her hand, before running her palm down to cup a cold cheek.

Pyrrha, long ago, had taught her how to awaken somebody’s dormant spirit, and Ruby only hopes it can call it forth, even when it is normally an old friend to its wielder.

“For it is in passing that we achieve immortality,” she murmurs, wondering at the ironic parallels she sees now in the spell to the boy in front of her, small and cold and vulnerable. Carrying the heavy weight of an ancient choice he will not abandon, no matter the costs.

And protectiveness flares within her heart, her own spirit rising at the call of the spell, the song of the ancients, to drag out one that has lied dormant too long.

Rose petals fall to the ground like bloodied flakes of snow.

“Through this, we become a paragon of virtue and glory to rise above all. Infinite in distance and unbound by death, I release your soul, and by my shoulder, protect thee.”

Though her eyes remain closed, she feels Oscar’s spirit respond to her own, an ocean rising tall and immeasurable, bottomless; the collection of countless men, merged into one will, one choice. An old hero who cannot stray from his path.

_I heard you the first time, miss Rose._

“...Ruby?”

Her eyes fly open and she pulls her hand away quickly, feeling almost as if she’d been burnt, a thousand voices still ringing in her mind.

And though Oscar’s eyes glow with residues of gold, it is clearly her friend that remains in control.

He shivers. “When did it get so cold?”

Oscar pulls the blanket closer around him, like a shield, tiny under the dark sky. And Ruby graces her fingers over the tips of his hair. “You’re still having trouble keeping your aura engaged in your sleep.”

Shy and mellow Oscar bows his head to hide his mouth under the blanket, eyes dipping away. “I don’t know how to keep it going,” he mumbles.

“First of all,” she says, grabbing his wrist and holding up his hand to receive the mug of hot chocolate. “Drink this. It’s from Weiss, and will warm up your body.”

Oscar blinks, but accepts it, looking across the camp of their sleeping companions to the girl sitting on the edge of the world, a white silhouette, the queen of a frozen kingdom.

“Second,” Ruby says, looking back at her companion, “while I didn’t mean to wake you, it might have done some good, after all. It seems Professor Ozpin is keeping it engaged for you from now on.”

“Huh?” Oscar looks back at her suddenly, surprise and vulnerable hurt on his face, green eyes wide. Then he holds up his hand, as if to test the truth of her statement, and green light glows like a gentle caress of spring across his skin as if it had never faded into darkness. “But...”

He closes his eyes, frown deepening, and when he opens them again the hurt doesn’t vanish. “He’s still hiding, so why is he...?”

Ruby nudges his hand with a smile. “Drink your chocolate,” she encourages.

While he’s distracted, she steals part of his blanket, and crawls under it to join him, protected. Oscar startles, nearly spilling his hot chocolate, and Ruby grins mischievously at the blush he can’t hide this time.

He’s still smaller than her, but in the half year she’s known him, he’s definitely grown. Sitting this close, she can feel the way his shoulder nearly reaches hers now, the way thin boyhood vulnerability is vanishing in favor of something stronger, something still hidden in the blurry memories of the future.

“This way it’ll be easier to warm up, right?”

“R-right,” he murmurs, hiding his face in the large mug.

“I assume he doesn’t want you to die from the cold,” Ruby observes, staring up at the dark sky. “Which is why he’s protecting you.”

Oscar lifts his head from the mug, carefully, and narrows his eyes at the world with bitter resentment. It doesn’t suit his face. “Right. It would be inconvenient to have to spend time raising a new vessel.”

“That’s not what I meant,” she chides, jostling his shoulder. “He always spoke very kindly of you. He cares. You’re his companion, and you’re part of each other.”

Some of the resentment washes away, and feeble hope is all that’s left, as he looks up at her with wide boyish fear. “How can you be so sure of that?”

“Because I know our old professor. And I know you,” she says. “And he wasn’t lying when he said the gods always paired him with a like-minded soul. Oscar, you’re too kind to ever treat somebody as less than human, so, of course, he would be the same.”

And, finally, he smiles. It wobbles at the edges, like feeble faith held together at the seams by nothing more than hope. But it’s soft and pretty, and a relief to see after so much sorrow. And as Oscar smiles, the cloud that had hidden the moon passes, casting his face in a mellow glow.

Ruby’s breath whistles past her lips at the sight, enchanted and mesmerised, drawn in by the beauty of summer warmth keeping the winter cold at bay. And then she wrenches her gaze away to look up at the stars far above them.

There’s an echo of a heartbeat in her ears, one that runs too quickly, with too much emotion, towards a conclusion she had never expected.

“We’re going to end this, one way or another,” she says. And she doesn’t know if it’s selfish possessiveness or a genuine wish for Oscar to feel secure and confident again, but she’s going to do her utmost to ensure he won’t just become another of Ozma’s lives.

“Yeah,” the boy at her side agrees, strength returning to his voice. “We just have to keep going.”

Ruby turns back to share a smile with him. “Exactly.”

Silence settles over them like a second blanket, then, and Ruby pulls her knees up under her chin to regard her sleeping companions, while the one at her side slowly finishes off his hot chocolate.

For better or for worse, dealing with The Apathy had helped them grow closer once more, had steeled their resolve. Blake and Yang have begun to talk out their problems, a whisper in between the lines of their conversations with the others, cheerful demeanor returning, and humor joining its ranks in rare moments of summer. Weiss is becoming herself again as well, chill and resistant to the idea of returning to Atlas, but no longer afraid of it either. Time had tested their bonds, as Ozpin had once said, but their friendships had withstood and become stronger in spite of the obstacles they’d faced. And Ruby walks a little easier though the burden of the gods still feels inescapably heavy at her hip.

“Ruby...?”

She doesn’t want them to bear it alone anymore.

“Hm?”

“It’s okay. I’m warm again now. You don’t have to keep me company anymore.”

She does her best to pretend to consider it, aware always of the wide eyes watching her expressions. Then she shakes her head. “I like it here,” she says finally. “If you don’t mind my staying.”

Her fingers tighten around her knees, hidden under the blanket. But Oscar’s expresses betrays no dislike of the idea. His eyes widen in surprise, and a smile spreads, boyish and bright at her show of partiality, silly and joyful, the type you can’t control.

And then he nudges her under the covers. “You just don’t want to go to sleep.”

“Wha—“ she pulls back, releasing her tight hold on herself without thinking. “What gave you that idea?”

Oscar’s smile turns into a smirk, as if to say he’s seen through her. “Oh, nothing. Just the fact that you’ve been stealing extra guard duty every night, and that you’re using this—“ he holds up the mug of hot chocolate—“as an excuse to not go to sleep.”

Ruby makes an indignant noise in the back of her throat. “I was being nice! It has nothing to do with—“

She gets a look for her protests, and narrows her eyes to glare back.

She’s never been good at showing her troubles, at crying where others can see her, or giving her family more reason to worry than they already do. And Ozpin has only reinforced that lesson, giving her excuses not to tell her team how fear sneaks up on her, gives her nightmares when she refuses to confront it, and keeps her awake at night whether she wants it or not. Her team comes first.

But this is Oscar. Oscar, who’s already shared his fears and worries with her, who won’t take no for an answer when he can see through the way she’s cramming a lid onto a bottle full of pressure. Oscar, who carries so much already, but refuses to let her walk alone.

Ruby’s mouth falls into a petulant frown, and she slides down under the blanket like a child. “What’s wrong with letting others sleep when I can’t, anyway?” she whines.

Oscar exhales a laugh, and it spreads through her veins like hot affection, golden honey. “You know, caring for and taking care of others is not a one way thing, right?” He glances down at her, golden eyes dancing. “We need each other to survive. Well rested.”

Ruby sticks her tongue out at him. “You sound just like Miss Calavera.”

Her blunt new teacher had been figuratively beating some common sense rules into her head recently, sharp voice and sharper ideals not something Ruby can’t relate to. But the lessons about rest and being open with the people she cares for clearly still elude her.

Beside her Oscar is laughing again, quiet and childlike, soft cheer that makes his expression glow with gold. “She is a bit eccentric.”

“Oh, I’m used to eccentric...”

There didn’t seem to be a teacher at Beacon that wasn’t eccentric.

Oscar peers down at her curiously, eyes dancing in a way that’s starting to suggest amusement. “You don’t like her?”

“Of course, I like her,” Ruby protests, sitting back up a little and pulling the blanket tighter. “But leaving Beacon the way we did, I never expected to return to school... so it’s difficult to get used to.”

The cheer drains out of him instantly, gold sliding away, leaving hues of blue winter behind. “Yeah, that sounds about right...”

He looks away, out across the horizon, back the way they’d come, shrinking at the vastness of the world, the distance their feet have travelled. And Ruby wonders if he ever completely regrets it, leaving home... especially with the way he’s been fearing his connection with his companion, it can’t be easy.

“What do you miss the most?” She asks gently, quietly. It’s a gamble; Oscar doesn’t talk about home, holds it close and private as if doing so will protect it from vanishing entirely from his grasp.

But he doesn’t hesitate.

“My aunt,” he says. “She’s kind of like Maria. Strict and blunt, always catching me when I was slacking off or overthinking things.”

Nostalgia falls on his face like snowflakes, pastel hues and pretty colours, a cool breath of winter in his cheeks and snow-day fun dancing in his eyes. “We lived so far off the grid I couldn’t risk going to school for the threat of Grimm. So she taught me everything I know about the world. And what I didn’t get from her I got from her library. Of course...” he hesitates, looking down into an empty white mug. “Now I remember so much more. Know so much more than just what those books ever taught me.”

His mouth falls to a flat line, corners bending into shadow. And Ruby wonders exactly how much of Ozma’s collected knowledge he has access to. Already they’ve both hinted that Oscar has free access to his companion’s memories, but she isn’t sure if he has to go looking for specific facts, as if he were in an endless library where the books are still writing themselves as he searches, whispered words taking shape as Oscar wanders purposefully through the darkness. Or if it all trickles down into his mind, unbidden and difficult to contain.

She doesn’t ask. “I miss books, too. Yang’s the one who taught me to read, to love stories. And there were so many to choose from. It was easy to get lost in those books.”

Oscar leans forwards a little, neck bending so he has a clearer view of her face as she speaks. Soft smiles, pastel green growing in the moon light. “Which is your favorite?”

Ruby grins. “How could you ask something like that?! There are too many!”

She gets a laugh for her enthusiasm. “Genre, then.”

“Adventure stories and fairy tales,” she responds promptly. “You?”

He considers this for a moment. “Tragic romances. Which is ironic,” he adds with a laugh, leaning back, eyes closing to keep out the world. “But I like the ones that are tragic in the middle best. Not at the end.”

When he opens his eyes again they fall on her with childhood prayers for sunlight’s return. Is it okay to hope? Is it possible to believe? Can I leave my pessimism behind when the road ahead is full of thorns?

And yet, a boy that has the courage to leave home for a cause he believes in, who adores a happy ending more than anything must already have hope at his core.

He doesn’t really need her.

But sometimes you just need another person to reaffirm that you’re okay.

Ruby throws her arm around his shoulder and resists the urge to mess up his hair. Instead she holds up a finger, and grins at him. “So a fairy tale.”

For a split second they’re just smiling at each other, and then laughter bubbles over, simple cheer and childhood joy in the middle of a frozen wasteland.

Qrow groans in his sleep somewhere not too far away, muttering incoherent threats, and Ruby and Oscar’s laughter turn to quiet snickering, giggles held back to not disturb their friends, and shushing each other like five year olds staying up past their bed time.

As they calm down, Ruby’s arm slipping from its rest on Oscar’s shoulders, snowflakes begin to fall from a sky full of stars. Oscar and Ruby share a look, eyes wide with wonder, and then look they up at the same time. The clouds have moved on, but in this magical world that doesn’t seem to matter.

“Which one is your favourite?” Ruby asks quietly.

“Huh?” Oscar returns his gaze from the sky, and as he does a single snowflake settles on his nose.

“Fairy tale,” Ruby prompts. She reaches out a finger and steals the snow flake with a quiet “boop.”

Oscar’s green eyes grow wide, never stealing from Ruby’s face, even as his cheeks redden in a blush that crawls all the way to the tips of his ears. His freckles glow like pink stars against his skin. “I... it’s ...” he glances away, down, “there is one, but it...”

Oscar glances back up at her, looking for confirmation, support, that she meets with another curious smile.

“It’s not just _my_ favorite fairy tale. Even if it’s one of the first I remember ever hearing, long before...”

He trails off, looking away again, old doubts and fears returning. And Ruby wonders at the idea of destiny, of so many souls being so alike that they should naturally gravitate towards the same thing, and towards each other—one after the other, in a line so long you can no longer see its beginning. They ought to get along better, to be in a position to trust each other.

But perhaps it’s not that simple when you share a body.

Before she can find meagre words of comfort, Oscar starts to speak. Hesitantly, he begins to tell the story of a girl who lost everything to a Grimm attack, her home, her family. But as she knelt between the ashes, tears steaming from her eyes in silver rivers, a traveller comes across her and begs her join him, to leave behind her place of sorrow. The girl follows him from her home, and as they wander Remnant he teaches her to fight for others, and in return she once again teaches him to love all that the world is.

The man grew to trust her and adore her, as he had done with others, and eventually told her of his quest, the burden that he bears of returning to life as long as he fails to achieve his goals. The girl promised to join him in his quest, to aide him so that he would finally find rest.

But that night they came across the ruins of a village, old and forgotten in the forest, and there they were beset by Grimm as they had never been before. The two fought until morning came, but as the moon fell away, so did the man’s life once more.

And seeing another person’s life drain so suddenly from the world, from joy and laughter and beauty, tears once again streamed from her eyes, stealing what little colour was there. And as the sun rose on the village, she instead absorbed its dawn light into her eyes and shone it back at the grim, vanquishing them in one great attack.

It’s a story very different to the one Qrow had told her all those months ago, but as Oscar speaks in lullaby tones of the two warriors who loved life more than anything, of a warrior of light who shared her gift with the world and saved countless lives, it becomes clear what he’s talking about.

He ducks his head away, shy at his own show of partiality. And Ruby smiles.

“Mine is the story of the seasons,” she says. “And the one about the sister witches. And the boy and the white rose. Oh, and—“

She slowly manages to draw him out of his shell again, and they talk each other to sleep under a broken moon as the snow continues to fall, by telling fairy tales and sharing stories with happy endings.

And as Ruby finally dozes off, curled up in a blanket full of warmth, with steady support at her side, she wonders if roses fall in straight lines all the way back to the world beyond stories, and if stems full of thorns connect at the end of their journey.

And when the sun crawls across the world once more, light slipping into her eyes when it hits the mountain, Ruby wakes slowly from quiet sleep.

Snow has fallen on everything, iced-over flecks glittering in the sunlight, so the world is clad in a coat of golden beauty.

Even their companions are covered by it, though their auras are still keeping them warm. It dances through the air as she moves, falling like glittering powder from her limbs and clothes.

Oscar, too, is clad in it, gold touching his skin and hair, warmth colouring his entire being, and making him glow like something more than human, something that belongs in this temple, ageless and untouchable, with too much knowledge and power running through his veins, liquid sunlight and magic.

But then his aura shimmers for just a second, and he shivers in the morning cold, mouth bending into a sleepy frown. And he is a boy once more, a child away from home, who has always been, through timeless ages, just human. And always will be. Soft smiles and kindness, bravery that comes from the surety that mortality finds us all at the end.

But happy endings are there for us along the way, in a parent’s hug, in roses growing in darkness, in friendship and love, and nightmares that can’t find their way into her mind, protected under a blanket of shared warmth.

Ruby rests her forehead against the side of Oscar’s head, nose parting dark strands of hair and smiles in the quiet of a morning safe from fear.

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to the end! Thank you for reading!
> 
> I think I've written 20k for this ship already, but this is the only fic I managed to actually FINISH.  
> Turns out slice-of-life pieces are easier than full pieces...
> 
> There are a bunch of small topics in this that I've been thinking about with these two. Like how Pyrrha's spell seems to perfectly define Oz's predicament. And the plant references in both their names, the roses and the thorns that reference their characters and how their fates are tied together. The book bonding! (Seriously, where is that, CRWBY?) I also love the idea of Oscar's favorite fairy tale being of silver eyed warriors, even from before he was bonded to Oz.  
> (Also the scene in episode 1 of v6 where Ruby saves Oscar still torments me. She looked so lost when she saw he was in trouble and the lines from Miracle in that moment ("Where's our happy ending?") were so tragic and haunting and just--I had to use it!)
> 
> I wanted to keep the romance as implied and as subtle as possible, because, well, Oscar is still just a kid... but as I was writing this I also realized how important that is in his dynamic with Ruby. She's still the runt of the litter in a sense; she was the youngest for so long and she still is in a sense. But she's suddenly been given all this responsibility, she has to be the most mature because nobody else is (except Maria. Thank the Gods for Maria), and she's been placed even more in a leadership position after Oz retreated. So it'd be such a relief for her to just relax and act like a child again, be silly and be unable to control your laughter, and who better to have that with than Oscar?
> 
> T.T RT please give them more chances to laugh again
> 
> Anyway! Thank you again for reading! I hope you enjoyed this! It was a lot of fun to write!
> 
> ... oh and please do leave a comment! I'd love to hear your thoughts!


End file.
